Angel of Brooklyn

by Jenkins, Janette

  By now, her father was lying flat out on the ground, the basket sitting ready in the leaves. Beatrice pulled in her knees. What if they weren’t the only people in Hackett’s Wood that night? Elijah had told her that men lived deep inside the wood, building small shacks out of branches, foraging for berries and wild mushrooms, whispering tales to each other, of how they’d lost their families, or their fortune, their once expensive clothes hanging threadbare from their shoulders.

  ‘Can you hear the cry?’ her father whispered. ‘Listen carefully. Concentrate.’

  She tried. Her teeth were chattering and she could feel things in her hair. She could hear birds all right, but how was she to know if they were nightjars?

  ‘It has to be them,’ said her father, slowly edging his way into the clearing with his elbows.

  They sat looking at the sky through the knotted branches. The birds were in silhouette, crying and slapping their wings.

  ‘Now keep very still,’ said her father. ‘They might want to take a closer look at us.’

  Beatrice didn’t move. Her legs were frozen. She was thinking about the men in their shacks, the moths in the basket and the birds that were moving like puppets in the sky. A couple of minutes later, her father unhooked the lid of the smaller basket, and the moths fluttered out, hovering, dazed in the thin pool of light, before disappearing into the darkness.

  ‘Damn.’

  They kept their eyes peeled to the ground, where the birds were supposed to be resting. By now, she could see quite well in the moonlight, and between the mounds of soil and dead leaves, rocks that looked like eggs began to move.

  ‘Oh, Lord,’ breathed her father. ‘This is it.’

  The birds were brown and purring; her father moved closer, the net poised in the air, his arm shaking with the effort of it. She was sure she could hear his thin heart pounding through the sheet. The tension made her ache. She closed her eyes tight. There was a fluttering, and a shrill kind of screaming, as her father dragged the thrashing net towards the basket.

  ‘As easy as that,’ he whispered. ‘Ratchett and his butterfly net. Some professor. What does he know about birds?’

  Feeling euphoric, they made their way home, their white clothes glowing, the basket gently bouncing at her father’s side, while Beatrice ate the sweet ginger cookies to stave off the cold. She felt light-headed. She’d braved the night-time wood. Captured a Mexican nightjar. Would Elijah ever believe her?

  Down Beaufort Street they walked, their tired feet stumbling over paving blocks, her father’s white sheet dragging in the dust. A boy looking down from his shady bedroom window rubbed his tired eyes and thought he must be dreaming.

  The house was in darkness, the lamp they’d left shining in the kitchen had died. Exhausted, Beatrice sank into a chair at the table. Her father was still restless. He gathered up some papers and the small twitching basket, disappearing into the night. Beatrice fell asleep with her head resting on North American Birds. She didn’t dream. She didn’t feel anything.

  It was not a good week. The bird they had captured had not lost its way. On closer inspection, the bird in the basket was a whippoorwill, common to Illinois. Her father banged his fist through the porch screen, wailing and cursing Professor Ratchett. He refused to buy the Chronicle.

  Most of the nightjar books and papers had been thrown to the back of a cupboard. Spines had broken. A couple of them had torn. Beatrice was sure she could smell liquor on her father’s sour breath, though she supposed it could possibly be one of the solutions that had soaked into his shirt, something that he’d ordered from a catalogue. These parcels came at least once a month. Beaks and eyes from Jefferson. Chemicals from Duluth. Bags of natural plumage from an office in downtown Monroe.

  ‘Is the bird still alive?’ she asked.

  ‘Who do you think I am?’ her father said. ‘Professor Henry Ratchett?’

  ‘So it’s dead?’

  ‘Of course the bird is dead. I specialise in the art of taxidermy. I have no intention of writing any fancy unreadable papers.’ And with that, he stood away from the table and swayed. ‘I’m feeling rather faint,’ he said. ‘The floor is starting to dip a little. Perhaps you would do me the great honour of bringing me over a bite to eat? Something plain. I’ll be in the outhouse, working.’

  ‘I’ll leave it on the step.’

  ‘No,’ he told her, ‘you’ll bring it right inside.’

  Beatrice paled. She hadn’t been in the outhouse for years. She’d crept around it. She’d peered into the small side window. It was always dirty. The glass was splashed with something that looked like goose fat.

  She took her time arranging crackers on a plate, a slice of trimmed ham, a somewhat soft tomato. She poured a glass of fresh water. The jaybird on the counter glared at her.

  It was cold outside. There was a sharp snap of wind. She could hear Mr Rickman next door talking about his dog. ‘She’s getting on, and the poor girl’s as blind as a bat, but the wife wouldn’t part with her, not for all the world.’

  Balancing the glass on the plate, she knocked on the door. As soon as her father opened it, the smell knocked her sideways. The air was clogged with glue, old blood and chemicals. It made her feel dizzy. No wonder her father was swaying.

  ‘Put the plate on the back bench,’ he told her, wiping his hands on a torn piece of rag. ‘There’ll be a space for it somewhere.’

  The bench ran along the back wall. It was full of pails, boxes and deep metal trays. She tried not to gag.

  ‘Now, come over to me,’ he said. ‘This is where it happens. This is where the light is.’

  Standing beside him, she tucked her thumbs into her fists. The basket was there, with its lid wide open. The bird they had captured had been pinned onto a board.

  ‘The smell,’ she said, looking away. ‘Can’t we open a window?’

  ‘Are you out of your mind? A small gust of wind could spoil everything. You’ll soon get used to it.’

  She put her hand on her face. Her eyes were stinging. Her father, with his tools on the table and his torn white overall, looked like a down-at-heel surgeon at the Cook County Hospital.

  ‘I’ll talk you through it,’ he said. ‘See, look closely now, you lay the specimen on its back and part the feathers along the bare area of the breastbone. The opening incision is made from a point at the forward tip of the breastbone, to the vent.’

  Beatrice held tight to the table as he picked up his scalpel.

  ‘It has to be sharp,’ he said, holding it into the light, like an actor. ‘You have to avoid cutting into the abdominal wall, or blood and body juices will run out and damage the feathers. See, this is perfect. Now, pass me the borax, it’ll soak up all the mess and help preserve the skin.’

  She pushed the box towards him. She didn’t want to look. Standing with the bird spread open, surrounded by the skulls from other creatures that had been boiled and scraped in the pot, she tried to think of other things. The blue hyacinths in her bedroom. Rose water. The beads her aunt Jess had sent her, small and creamy white, but then they reminded her of the whippoorwill’s tiny eyeballs that were sitting dead and glazed on a plate. She was sure the bird was twitching as she stepped away from the bench.

  ‘Girls have no stomach,’ said her father to the bird.

  Beatrice moved around blindly. Broken skulls in various shades of white sat across a narrow shelf, proud souvenirs, bowls held teeth and bones, and a ferret, mounted on a piece of polished bark, had pins in its eyes and sticks where its toes should have been.

  ‘It’s drying,’ said her father. ‘Do you think it looks fierce? I’m practising the fierce look for when I get something bigger.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘A wolf,’ he told her with a smile. ‘Now that would be a challenge.’

  He scratched his ear. Beatrice could see a globule of dark stringy blood hanging from his lobe. His fingernails were black with it. Retching into her hand, she grabbed at the door, running through the gard
en and into the house, gulping all the way to her bedroom, where she plunged her hands and face into the bowl of cold water on the washstand. She stripped off her clothes. They were full of death and chemicals. She kicked them into a corner. They made her feel dirty.

  A branch pressed against the window as she pulled on yesterday’s dress. There was a coffee stain on the sleeve, but now it felt like something clean, and it smelled as good as the French perfume they sold in Davenport & Lamb, where the salesmen wore oil in their hair and ruby-coloured cufflinks.

  She slumped against the window. The outhouse was dirty against the fresh trees and sky. She could see Mr Rickman with the dog they called Bess. What did he think happened in the outhouse? Did he picture trays of seedlings? Soil-stained rakes? A crate of yellow apples?

  She stayed in her room for the rest of the day, sitting on her bed, reading Elijah’s Good for the Soul storybooks. She couldn’t face the birds. It was only when she saw her father weaving over the lawn, his hair springing back in the wind, losing feathers, that she braved the wild turkey on the landing.

  Six weeks later, the whippoorwill was fully complete. A ball of brown and cream in a brown-leaf setting. Elijah, back from Jacksonville, admired it.

  ‘You have to look twice to see the bird,’ he said. ‘The camouflage is excellent.’

  Beatrice stood back. She thought the bird looked frightened, and perhaps a little lonely.

  ‘Naturalistic,’ her father said, rubbing his hands together. ‘One of my very best attempts, don’t you think?’

  He was more than pleased with himself. He’d heard on the grapevine that Professor Ratchett’s specimen had barely lasted a fortnight.

  ‘That would make for a very short paper, and a waste of a good brass cage,’ he said. ‘And you know something else? If that so-called professor offered me that half-witted buff-collared nightjar, who didn’t know the difference between Pontiac and El Paso, I’d be telling him, in no uncertain terms, that I just wasn’t interested.’

  FRAGILE

  BEATRICE THOUGHT SHE heard a scratching at the door, then the scratching turned into knocking. It was Madge.

  ‘It’s Frank,’ she said, looking quickly over her shoulder. ‘He asked me to come. He said to give you this.’ She held out a piece of crumpled paper. It had been folded and refolded. ‘I’ve read it. I don’t know what it means.’

  ‘Come on in, come and sit by the fire,’ said Beatrice. ‘There’s fresh tea in the pot. How’s Frank?’

  ‘He’s recuperating, slowly.’ Madge hesitated before following her inside. ‘He has good days and bad.’

  Beatrice stood by the window unfolding the paper. In dark, thick pencil it said: Did you ever have a twin? Were there more of you? I have seen. I believe. I have missed them. She could hear Madge rubbing her hands as she read it through twice.

  ‘Did Frank write this?’ said Beatrice finally.

  ‘It’s his handwriting.’

  ‘I don’t have a twin. I’ve never had a twin.’

  ‘Of course you don’t,’ said Madge, quickly taking the paper from her and pushing it into her pocket, ‘it’s just some stuff and nonsense. He’s been having lots of peculiar dreams, and the medicine, it’s very strong, it makes him ramble on, and then he gets all agitated. I’ve had to send the boys off to their aunt’s.’

  ‘Is he getting any better?’ Beatrice asked, sitting at the table and pouring cups of pale-coloured tea. ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘He hurt his back,’ said Madge. ‘He really can’t remember how he did it.’

  ‘Was he in hospital?’

  ‘A field hospital. They did what they could.’

  ‘Did he bring back any news?’

  ‘About Jonathan you mean?’

  Beatrice looked down, taking a sip of her tea; it tasted of the fields, of the wet world outside. ‘Jonathan and the others. Are they still together?’

  ‘I don’t know. I wish I could tell you. He’s home, but he doesn’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘And I’ve wished for that every hour – Jonathan, back where I can see him. Where was Frank fighting?’

  ‘France.’

  ‘Whereabouts?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m sorry.’

  Beatrice looked disappointed. ‘I just wanted some news.’

  ‘I wish I could help you,’ said Madge, pushing her cup away. ‘I’d better get back.’

  ‘Don’t forget to tell him,’ said Beatrice, managing a smile.

  ‘Tell him what?’

  ‘No twins, just me.’

  Suddenly Madge stopped. Her face was burning. ‘Thing is,’ she said, ‘I was going to ask …’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘There’s this word, he keeps on saying this word.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s foreign. French. It sounds a bit like bully bass.’

  ‘Bouillabaisse?’ said Beatrice.

  Madge looked relieved. ‘Yes, that’s it, that’s the word exactly.’ She paused. ‘So what is it?’

  ‘It’s like a broth,’ said Beatrice. ‘It’s made with shellfish, and fish, it’s really very pungent.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I’m positive.’

  ‘Fish broth,’ she said, shaking her hand and smiling. ‘Really? Is that all it is now? A broth?’

  ‘Beatrice!’

  Beatrice turned. Lizzie was leaning over the farm wall, waving at her. Beatrice put down the slop bucket, patted Bertha on the head, and went to see what the matter was.

  ‘It’s nothing really,’ said Lizzie. ‘It’s just that Al Riley’s mother has organised a spiritualist evening. She’s desperate to hear from Al. Her husband doesn’t approve, so I said she could have it at my house tonight. We’re all going to be there. The medium’s quite well known. She’s supposed to be very good.’

  ‘Most of them are charlatans,’ said Beatrice.

  ‘This one isn’t. Ada once saw her at the Varieties. A woman in her row heard from her husband. She knew all sorts of things about him. Even the name of his dog.’

  ‘All right,’ she smiled. ‘It’ll get me out of the house.’

  ‘And you never know who you might hear from,’ Lizzie smiled, waving over her shoulder.

  Beatrice had met a spiritualist in New York. A Hungarian woman who, for the price of a meal, would hold your hand, roll in her seat and give you messages from beyond in a strange crackling voice. Beatrice had seen women clutching handkerchiefs and swaying in the doorway of the East Side Cafeteria, the medium’s favourite place for Polish sausage and borscht. Sceptical men would be found wiping tears from their eyes when she moaned their mother’s name, and they would hand her extra money for another glass of wine. Nancy had visited her, hoping to hear from a boy called Eugene Parker, her first love, who’d drowned in a pond, just after his sixteenth birthday. Nancy had bought the woman a two-course lunch, and they’d sat in her favourite curtained booth, holding hands. Nancy was certain that she’d felt strange vibrations, moving up her arms. But she had been disappointed. The woman described a boy, but the boy wasn’t Eugene. ‘She said he was tall, and thin, like a long piece of string,’ said Nancy. ‘But Eugene was as stocky as they come.’

  ‘Are you a believer, Mrs Crane?’ said Lionel. He’d been one of the first to arrive at Lizzie’s. He’d brought pamphlets about the spiritualist movement, endorsed by his friend Conan Doyle.

  ‘I haven’t yet made up my mind,’ she told him, which she supposed was the safest thing to say.

  Lizzie appeared with a tray of rattling cups and saucers. ‘I’m nervous. Just look at my hands. The children are sound asleep upstairs, thank goodness; I don’t want to be giving them nightmares. And I’ve been thinking about ectoplasm,’ she said, putting down the tray. ‘Does it leave a mess?’

  ‘Is she here yet?’ said Ada, pulling off her coat.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, let’s have a cup of tea anyway, I’m cold to the bone, and some of these mediums
don’t like to eat or drink before they start performing.’

  Lionel cocked his head. ‘Performing?’ he said. ‘These people are special. They are gifted, and they are generous enough to use that gift with others. They’re certainly not theatricals.’

  Ada held her hands over the small licking fire. ‘It’s all the rocking and groaning that gets me. Why do they have to do that? When I saw her at the Varieties, she was good, but she was acting like something from King Lear. He was on the week previous, shouting and beating his chest in the wind. It fair wore me out.’

  ‘They have to attune themselves,’ said Lionel. ‘Their body is the vessel for the departed person to use. It’s an extremely sensitive instrument.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Ada. ‘Where’s Madge?’

  ‘She’s going to be here at the last minute,’ said Lizzie. ‘She doesn’t like leaving Frank for too long.’

  Mrs Riley appeared, bringing a sudden gust of air. ‘The medium’s on her way,’ she said, unwinding the scarf from around her neck. ‘She’s at the top of the lane. We should go and knock for Madge.’

  ‘I’ll go,’ said Lizzie. ‘I said I’d tap lightly on the window, in case Frank’s asleep.’

  ‘Is his back any better?’

  ‘Madge said he can hardly move an inch,’ said Lizzie. ‘Funny thing is, I saw them dancing the other night, though I didn’t like to mention it.’

  They sat in a circle around the table in the parlour. Lizzie had used her good lisle cloth and her best brass candlesticks. The medium was wearing black. A large cameo brooch was pinned at her throat. She had a long sombre face and tightly scraped-back hair.

  ‘I am a spiritualist,’ she told them. ‘I am not a Madame Zaza, or a gypsy from the fairground. I’m Dora Barnes. Mrs Dora Barnes, plain and simple. I come with no airs or graces. Now, let us all join hands. We need to make a circuit.’

  Lionel nodded sagely, as if he did this all the time. Beatrice remembered Morecambe and wondered if Dora Barnes talked in riddles like the palmist. Suddenly, Mrs Barnes closed her eyes, and let her head flop down, like her neck had just snapped. The women looked around. Lionel had his eyes closed, as if he might be praying. Perhaps they should do the same? With his pamphlets and his nodding, he seemed quite the expert. Mrs Riley was biting her lip. She had a photograph of Al in her pocket. It was her favourite. He was laughing by the boating lake at Barrow Bridge. It had been a good day. Perhaps he’d look down from wherever he was, and remember it?